Roy Blount Jr. is the author of over twenty books, about everything from the first woman president of the United States to what barnyard animals are thinking. His most recent book is Save Room For Pie: Food Songs and Chewy Ruminations, and his other books include, Alphabetter Juice: The Joy of Text,Hail, Hail Euphoria: Presenting the Marx Brothers in Duck Soup,Long Time Leaving: Dispatches From UpSouth, whichwon the 2007 nonfiction award from the New England Independent Booksellers Association, and Feet on the Street: Rambles Around New Orleans, which The New York Times called “a wild, unpredictable ramble through a wild, unpredictable town.”

Blount is a panelist on NPR’s Wait, Wait…Don’t Tell Me, ex-president of the Authors Guild, a member of PEN and the Fellowship of Southern Authors, a New York Public Library Literary Lion, a Boston Public Library Literary Light, a usage consultant to the American Heritage Dictionary, and an original member of the Rock Bottom Remainders. He comes from Decatur, Georgia and divides his time between western Massachusetts and New Orleans. In 2009, he received the Thomas Wolfe Award from the University of North Carolina.

A contributing writer of The Oxford American, Blount writes a regular column for Garden and Gun, and has done so in the past for Esquire, The New York Times, Atlanta Magazine, Men’s Journal, Conde Nast Traveller, The San Francisco Examiner, and many more outlets. His essays, articles, stories, verses, and even drawings have appeared in 171 different periodicals including The New Yorker, Gourmet, Playboy, Vanity Fair, GQ, Life, TV Guide, Vogue, Rolling Stone, and National Geographic; and in 216 books, including The Best of Modern Humor, The Oxford Book of American Light Verse, The Norton Book of Light Verse, The Ultimate Baseball Book, Russell Baker’s Book of American Humor, and Best American Essays 1997.

For Sports Illustrated, where he was a staff writer and associate editor 1968-75 and is now a Senior Special Contributor, Blount has rafted the Amazon (attacked by piranha), played baseball with the 1969 Chicago Cubs (hit a ball 350 feet), become all but athletically a virtual member of the dynasty-years Pittsburgh Steelers, and hung out with Wilt Chamberlain, Yogi Berra, Reggie Jackson and the world’s oldest then-living lifeguard. (Though not all at once.)

As a lifelong eater, Blount always got along easy with food—he didn’t have to think, he just ate. But food doesn’t exist in a vacuum; there’s the global climate and the global economy to consider, not to mention Blount’s chronic sinusitis, which constricts his sense of smell, and consequently his taste buds. So while he’s always frowned on eating with an ulterior motive, times have changed. Save Room for Pie grapples with these and other food-related questions in Blount’s signature style

This book is for anyone—novice wordsmith, sensuous reader, or career grammarian—who loves to get physical with words. What is the universal sign of disgust, ew, doing in beautiful and cutie? Digging into how locutions evolve, and work, or fail, Blount draws upon everything from The Tempest to The Wire.

Paperback

Alphabet JuiceThe Energies, Gists, and Spirits of Letters, Words, and Combinations Thereof; Their Roots, Bones, Innards, Piths, Pips, and Secret Parts, Tinctures, Tonics, and Essences; With Examples of Their Usage Foul and Savory

Sarah Crichton Books

In Alphabet Juice, Blount celebrates the juju, the crackle, the sonic and kinetic energies, of letters and their combinations.

Wait, Wait... Tell Me
The hilarious Roy Blount Jr. recounts a lifetime of reporting on everything from the 1969 Chicago Cubs to the Civil Rights movement to the world’s oldest living lifeguard.

'Gollywoddles' and Beyond
Ever wonder why ‘toadless,’ but not ‘frogless’ is included in the Oxford English Dictionary? Or what the U.S. Supreme Court ruling on ‘gollywoddles’ is? With characteristic humor, Roy Blount Jr. explores the meaning and significance of language.

"Roy was like discovering a level somewhere below droll that was just as funny, but with all the laconic excitement of a porch-stuck hound in full lounge mode.”— Jim Meyers, The Tennessean

Praise for Alphabetter Juice

“Blount's selection of words is particularly 'sonicky' and is accompanied by amusing facts and anecdotes and crazy stories that show the peculiarities of etymology and definitions and the deep and abiding beauty of words. Writers and readers will love this book.”— Booklist

“The humorist and panelist on public radio's Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me pours a tall glass of wordplay, witticism, curmudgeonry, and anecdote in this beguiling follow-up to Alphabet Juice. Blount's hilarious collection of riffs and raves adds up to a cantankerous ode to the English language in all its shambling grace.”— Publishers Weekly, starred review

Praise for Long Time Leaving

"Adorned with poetical lists and quirky details, Blount's work is unflaggingly passionate and provocative over a range of subjects, including food, politics and all things Southern, and he's as likely to quote The Women's Times as Shakespeare or Zora Neale Hurston. A lively curmudgeon who's talked to just about everyone on just about everything (especially grits), Blount's energetic, unpredictable essays are sure-fire fan-pleasers, and fine discoveries for newcomers."- Publisher's Weekly

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